Manus was once a normal world, like countless other spheres drifting in the aether of the prime material plane. Peasants toiled in the fields, kings waged war upon one another, wizards delved the secrets of the multiverse, and priests raised their voices in adoration of the gods. Then one day, which began like any other, the dark truth of the universe began to unfold before the unbelieving eyes of the people of Manus. For from beyond the stars came the invaders - agents of dark and terrible creatures older than the gods, that wallowed and surged in the starless depths of the universe.

Waiting… Watching.

Fathomless, shapeless creatures writhed in deepest space, contemplating unthinkable impossibilities. Some had no eyes and yet saw, others had a million eyes, all blind. All were malignant, timeless, omnipotent monstrosities whose very existence flew in the face of everything that the people of Manus had come to believe. And as the skies above Manus were torn apart these invaders surged, churned, oozed and bubbled into the world, and with them came their agents the tyrants.

The battle against the tyrants was a long one. They were mighty but the races of Manus were survivors, and knew well where best to hide in their world. Still, many of the peoples of Manus were reduced to nothing but memory as the orbs' invasion continued. Until the day when, almost by accident, the race of men discovered their secret. They learned how the invaders controlled their tyrant servants, and with control of the tyrants turned the war, and the invaders were driven back into the holes in the sky, and returned to those place beyond the stars where they lie still.

Meanwhile the tyrants remained in the world, under the sway of the men who had turned them. And those men founded a mighty nation, which they called Peria, using the magic they gleaned from the tyrants to make life better. Turning the lore they pioneered in wartime to found a civilization that ran on magecraft. But many amongst the folk of Peria believed that the magic of the invaders must be evil, and that harnessing it was folly. And these men travelled south, in a great exodus, to found the various kingdoms of the southern coalition.

And so the world remains. To the north, in Peria, the mages rule a mighty nation whose military are unequalled, and whose civilization grows to greater and greater heights daily. And to the south the Coalition, numerically superior to the folk of Peria, convinced that the mages to the north who embrace their tyrant slaves must be tainted by the evil of the enemy. To the north the gods are dead, to the south they cling to them as divine saviours. And between the two nations, to prevent a cataclysmic war, sits the desolate warground called the Wound. A place where the ruins of a dozen races smoulder still.